Oxshott, Surrey, stockbroker belt, just inside the London orbital motorway, but outside the tedious sameness of suburbia. No more urban density, no more terraced or semi-detached, but leafy lanes, big stand alone houses well set back, electronically controlled gates for access, double and triple garages, big gardens, lawns, flower beds, copses of trees, water features, big walls to keep intruders out, to stop prying eyes from looking in, big salaries to match of course, you needed those to live here.
I had her cornered. Not unpleasantly. By which I mean, not with any use of force. Maybe for her, having no escape route might not have felt too pleasant. For me, being this close up and personal with someone I had not expected to be quite this cute was perfectly pleasant, even if force had not been needed.
Having her cornered was more the result of the geometrics of the soft linen coloured, shaker kitchen, with its double sink, centre island, triple ovens, American fridge freezer and under the counter wine cooler. The electric sockets had been correctly installed a safe distance from the sink, so that the stainless steel kettle was at one end of that window wall, and that was where she had filled the cafetiere with boiling water, and from there poured the coffee into the two pure white, fine china mugs. I might have waited at the tri-fold doorway to the paved patio and the lawn beyond, where I had just been working, but instead I had strolled right over.
My standing right up close to her meant that she was trapped against the bevelled edges of the sixty millimetres thickness of speckled white, quartz worktop that went in two directions from the corner unit, where underneath there would be a pair of circular shelves that turned on smooth bearings to let you access all the way to the very back, so between those two quartz worktops she was literally cornered, while I was right in front of her, my chest no more than an inch from her cotton covered breasts.
I was close enough to smell the conditioner she used, that kept her jet black hair so lustrous, close enough to see the pure white skin line of her centre parting as I looked down at her, and to enjoy a bird's eye view of the deep valley between her breasts where neither her primrose yellow, short sleeved, Indian cotton, summer blouse, nor the top of her flower embroidered, pale blue apron hid the tempting reveal of flesh. I was going to enjoy exposing the fullness of those breasts. She was much cuter than I had imagined, and the revenge fuck that I had planned was going to be far sweeter than I had ever dreamed of.
I was close enough that she could certainly smell my own aftershave, the cologne I use lightly on my upper body rather than my face, because now that I work outdoors, I no longer need to shave, and designer stubble better fits my new role as handyman gardener, odd jobber, or however it should be defined, better than my previous life in floor to ceiling glass windowed offices. I had already worked two hours, bedding in an array of partially grown flowering plants and shrubs that would make talking points for summer garden parties with well-heeled neighbours, as they sipped chilled white wine or Pimms, and chewed on canapes, so having done that work already in the summer sun, overlaying the fragrance of my cologne, a more natural male odour would have been present, the earthy aroma that inevitably comes with physical labour in the sun. She was petite, and I am not. Her cute nose, which like her breasts was also only inches from my chest, would certainly have picked up on both my cologne, and that other, earthy fragrance.
In fact, her breasts were several inches closer to me than her nose. I was pretty sure that they were natural, and that it was not her bra which made them stand so proud. My surmise was that she was one of those women whose breasts develop at a younger age than most, not just to be fuller than so many, but to jut out from their torsos in blatant but embarrassing defiance of any force of gravity. Embarassing, because verbal barbs from other girls could be harsh and hurtful, while boys just looked in awe, or lust or lustful awe. Embarrassment comes easily to the young, but she was no longer in her teenage years, closer to thirty, a woman, not a girl. Her display of cleavage said that she was now very comfortable with those breasts.
What I needed was behind her, but instead of asking her, I just reached for it, leaning forwards, stretching my arm over her left shoulder. My chest pressed against the apron bib, and the softness just beneath. Had I still been wearing the work shirt I had travelled in, had I not left it on a rattan chair outside, the intimacy of that movement would have been so much less. Instead, it was the tanned, bare skin of my chest, softened with its dense mat of black hair, that grazed her apron front, pressing gently against the breast beneath, and it was muscular bare arm that touched her hair.
I moved the bowl with its apt single word inscription "Sugar", to beside my mug, removed the top, and spooned two scoops into my coffee. I like my coffee the way revenge is best enjoyed. I drink it sweet.
I lifted the mug above her head and brought it to my lips. I can drink hot. It tasted good. I told her so.
She looked up, nervously.
"I hope that it's okay," she said. "Can I get you a biscuit... or anything?"
Any excuse for us to move, for me to back away and set her free.
"No," I said. "I'm good."
She stayed trapped, not just by the kitchen corner and my body, but by her reserve, her inability to assert herself, even just to suggest to me that I could take my coffee outside and enjoy the shade of the patio, let alone that that was where I should have stayed, instead of intruding on her personal space. She was flustered, embarrassed by my closeness, but had no way of expressing it, or extricating herself from being cornered by a man's bare torso. To try to squeeze past me would have meant touching bare male flesh, and that was not something that she was prone to do.
Unlike myself, she had not been in the sun. Her complexion was still pure white. Green eyes, unusual in someone with black hair. Cute ski-slope nose, full lips. In spite of her neat frame, her figure was womanly, neither slim nor overweight, her hips curving nicely beneath her pure white, wrap around, calf length, waist tied skirt of light Indian cotton, her arms not toned, but nicely rounded, shapely, her legs quite possibly the same, not toned but shapely, but those were hidden by that skirt.
"You make good coffee," I said, putting the mug to my mouth and taking in some more. "What make is it?"
"It's from Waitrose," she answered, naming England's most expensive supermarket chain.
"Classy," I said. "Aren't you too warm in your pinny?"
I like to choose my words carefully. Calling it an apron would have left it just a question. Calling it a pinny was gently ridiculing it. No one needs an apron to brew a cafetiere of coffee. The gentle mockery left her momentarily speechless, a moment that I took advantage of, reaching behind her, not this time for sugar, but for the butterfly bow knot that I guessed she would have used, right behind her neck, beneath her locks of jet black hair. I found an end and pulled.
"You can't just...," she started but by then I had put down my mug and was using one hand to draw her towards me from the countertop, creating space between her and the quartz, for my other hand to go behind her waist. Another knot, another end, another gentle pull, and I removed the apron from her body.
I flattened my hand at the base of her spine, and drew her closer still. By close, I mean she would have felt my hardness, angular inside the gardening shorts that I had been wearing all that summer, but as erect as Nelson's column in Trafalgar square, standing proud for England.
Another woman might have slapped my face by then. Not this woman. She had no idea what to do. She was not used to the directness of approach that I was using and had no responses in her standard repertoire of human interaction.
One by one I eased the small white buttons of her blouse, back through the neatly stitched eyeholes, starting at the topmost. With each button, another inch or more of pure white cleavage came into view, then white brassiere, nylon, imitation lace, fine enough to let the pinkness of her areolas show through from just beneath.
That was when she struggled. It was hardly worth describing it as struggling. She twisted slightly, trying to turn her body round, away from mine, but routine spadework gives you strength, and all I had to do was tense my arm and she conceded. Looking up at mine, her green eyes told me she would not give me any more resistance.
She let me slip the blouse from her shoulders and slide it down her arms. One of my hands was still behind her, the one that I had just used to keep her where she was. I let the blouse fall from her back and rested my hand instead on her warm flesh, my fingers splayed against the ladder of her ribcage, nudging the back strap of her bra that crossed from side to side. I found the clasp and prised it open. One at a time, I drew the narrow shoulder straps to either side, to midway down her upper arms. The cups fell forwards, half on, half off her breasts, the edges of the cups resting on her nipple stubs, baring the upper circles of her areolas, the pink skin taut and shiny smooth, the areolas no less than three entire inches from edge to edge, their centres a darker shade of pink that would turn nicely red when they were abused.
As if to help me, she relaxed her arms, the shoulder straps falling with the weight of the bra cups, and she removed her arms from them as her bra came to rest between us, level with my crotch, her waist.
"Is that what you wanted?" she asked. It was not a challenge, for she was not capable of that. It was defensive, timorous, anxious that she did not displease.
I ignored the question. If she needed to ask what I wanted, she was incredibly naΓ―ve.
I cupped a breast. My palm just managed to conceal the smooth, pink areola, no more than that. There was too much breast to hold in just one hand. I had rinsed my hands beneath an outside tap, and dried them on my shorts, but they were still a workman's hands, the skin hardened by labour. She gasped. Her nipple stub felt rubbery against my palm, not a thimble nipple, as some women's nipples are, but no more than a slight protuberance at the forwardmost tip of her breast, darker in colour than the surrounding areola, and firm beneath the surface so that I could sense it pressing softly against my hand.
I had seen photographs in the hallway, of the happy couple on their wedding day, and on holiday together. One was of the wedding guests, somewhere around one hundred. The building behind the guests was Hampton Court, an expensive place to celebrate a marriage, reminiscent, for me, of beheadings, wives disposed of by an eighth Henry desperate for a male heir. There were no photographs of children. No crayon drawings in the kitchen. No infant had yet sucked on these breasts, although when the time came, they could provide milk enough for triplets, should necessity arise. I grazed the nipple's firmness with my palm, moving my hand in small circles, and she drew in her breath.
"Please!" she whimpered.